No wonder Aaron Brown got the boot from CNN...

[fooj]

http://www.palmbeachdailynews.com/news/content/news/brown0126.html

BROADCASTER SAYS SERIOUS NEWS AT RISK

The anchorman whose boss once characterized him as ice compared with his successor's fire was anything but chilly in the impassioned speech he delivered Tuesday at The Society of the Four Arts.

"Truth no longer matters in the context of politics and, sadly, in the context of cable news," said Aaron Brown, whose four-year period as anchor of CNN's NewsNight ended in November, when network executives gave his job to Anderson Cooper in a bid to push the show's ratings closer to front-runner Fox News.

Brown said he tried to give viewers a balanced diet of light and serious news with NewsNight. "But I always knew when I got to the Brussels sprouts, I was on thin ice," he said.

When NewsNight spent four hours covering the arrest of actor Robert Blake for the murder of his wife, Brown received thousands of e-mails criticizing the amount of time the show spent on the story. Nevertheless, that show, which aired in April 2002, received the highest ratings of any program since NewsNight's coverage of the November 2001 crash of American Airlines flight 587.

<snip>
This article is definitely worth the read.

Peace.

[Ilsa]

1. Ug. He also said tv was the msot perfect democracy,

"You sit there with your remote control and vote." No, it's just that it is very much like our democracy, where everything is controlled by money and the agenda of the owners.

Thanks for the article, though. I'll read all of it. He makes some very good points.

[Sperk]

2. Hightest rating...what does that mean...500K watched instead of 300K?

try giving us the real news if you want to see your ratings go up....it's all relative.

[Generic Other]

3. Hey, I was one of the thousands who wrote him a letter that day

I think so many people were tuned into the news that night because of some more significant story than Bobby Blake. Remember Scott Ritter, Mr. Asshole Brown? Remember calling up Will Pitt and ranting at him like a drunken clown? Remember how we were preparing to shock and awe Iraq?

Gee, we have such short memories around here, Mr. B. Some of us did think there were some issues to be discussed other than second-hand stories from the National Enquirerer. We didn't tune in for that news. We tuned in to hear Scott Ritter who you refused to allow on your show after calling him "radioactive." And that's why you got letters, you dumb ass. Just because you were in a drunken haze during that phase of your life, don't think all of your viewers were.

We gave you a chance. All you had to do was level with the viewer. Instead you chose to read the script the corporate heads gave you. And look where it landed you in the end. The same place you so feared ending up. Only now you lost your integrity in the process.

It's hard to have much sympathy for a self-confessed liar.

[applegrove]

4. Lots of folk were fooled into shock & awe. And Brown went Balistic

when Bush WH tried to shut down the 9/11 hearings. He never let the neocon pundits bully him. He refused to interview Mr. "100 most dangerous people (80% democrats) in the USA".

He was a voice of the old type of journalism. He was.

[Generic Other]

5. Not a lot of people at DU were fooled

I tell you DUers are the ones who wrotew Brown those letters in April 2002. We earned the right to call him an asshole.

[applegrove]

6. Brown also told the facts during Katrina. CNN reporters asked

the Pentagon what they were doing on Wednesday of the crisis - and Pentagon said "why are you feeling sorry for people of NO, we are having a hard time here at the pentagon..what about us". And Brown and CNN reported that.

Lots of people were sullied buy buying the false intel on Iraq. Lots of people.

[Generic Other]

7. In April 2002, FEW DUers were buying the lies

Were you here?

Did you read the email exchanges between Brown, Will Pitt and Scott Ritter? Did you see how Brown smeared Michael Moore for opposing the war? How he dismissed the anti-war movement? The man has a bucket of blood on his hands. And his head up his ass.

[applegrove]

8. A bucket of blood on many people's hands. I was not here I bought

Powell's lies; hook, line & sinker. I thought the US would go in with enough troops to end the terror of Saddam and keep the peace while Iraqis sorted it out. That was not the plan. We who gave the USA the benefit of the doubt at the time are the ones who are shocked and awed. A growing group. You learn.

Don't know about Brown. But some Liberals are for humanitarian intervention. Rwanda, Darfur, WWII, Kosovo, etc.